I am thinking, that our project will be the same as Calcisco!!!
Blood test for early detection of calcification propensity
Vascular calcification leads to increased mortality amongst patients with chronic kidney disease. CALCISCO offers a unique laboratory test for detecting calcification propensity in blood, thus bridging a significant gap in diagnostics and therapy monitoring.
Pathological calcifications and cardiovascular events are among the most serious worldwide health problems. They are especially prevalent
in kidney patients. This leads to suffering, and abundant interventions and hospitalizations. Furthermore, calcifications result in a vastly enhanced risk of death and high costs for patients and health insurance companies alike. Unfortunately, so far, the early detection of patients at increased calcification risk and, therefore, the timely guidance of therapy and monitoring of treatment success have not been possible. A novel blood test closes this diagnostic gap and enables, for the first time, the early detection of patients at enhanced risk of calcification.
CALCISCO’s T50 blood test is currently being developed for commercial use by the Bern-based biotech start-up CALCISCO, which is located with its own laboratories within the central lab of University Hospital Bern, Inselspital. Under very strict conditions, the novel T50 test detects a complicated physicochemical phenomenon, the time of transformation from so-called primary to secondary calciprotein particles (CPPs). This is a completely novel approach in medicine. The transformation time differs among individuals and is indicative of the respective patient’s calcification propensity. Thus, the T50 test simulates in a test tube within hours what may happen in the patient over the next years.
As a proof of the high clinical relevance of this novel test, a 5-year study with 180 patients suffering from chronic renal disease has already shown that the patients with the worst T50 values had a 500% higher risk of death than those with the best values. These exciting results have recently been confirmed in 700 kidney transplant patients, who had been followed over 4 years. Given these strong data on individual prognosis it is reassuring, that in a study with 200 hemodialysis patients the test result of the T50 test could be improved with already available medication.
Given its unique features and predictive value, the T50 test has a large potential to become a future reference lab test for kidney patients to reduce suffering, hospitalizations and mortality. These high aims will be achieved by individually, T50-guided therapies. Accordingly, “we hope that with our diagnostic and monitoring concept, we can contribute to an improvement of the survival rate amongst kidney patients and possibly also other patient groups with an increased risk of calcification,” said Dr Andreas Pasch, senior physician at Inselspital Bern and inventor of the test. “Based on the present scientific data there is realistic hope that the T50 test represents a breakthrough and provides an important and clinically usable diagnostic tool to prevent pathological calcifications.”
CALCISCO’s T50 test is planned to be introduced to the market for first clinical use by 2015 at the Inselspital Bern as a diagnostic service, followed by the main and scalable product, the T50 test kit in 2016. In order to achieve these goals, CALCISCO is currently preparing a first financing round.
